It was hard to breathe, let alone to speak, but Fandorin turned to O-Yumi and forced out a few hoarse words:
‘Just one word. Only one. Me – or – him?’
Bullcox apparently also wanted to say something, but his voice failed him.
Both boxers stood and watched as the black-haired woman walked down the stairs in her light outfit with the sun shining through it.
She reached the bottom and glanced upwards reproachfully at Erast Petrovich. And said with a sigh:
‘What a question. You, of course… Forgive me, Algie. I was hoping everything would end differently for us, but clearly it was not to be.’
The Briton was absolutely crushed. He started blinking, looking from O-Yumi to Fandorin and back again. The Right Honourable’s lips trembled, but he still couldn’t find any words.
Suddenly Bullcox shouted something inarticulate and went dashing up the steps.
‘Let’s run!’ said O-Yumi, grabbing the titular counsellor by the hand and pulling him after her towards the door.
‘What f-for?’
‘His armoury room is upstairs!’
‘I’m not afraid!’ Erast Petrovich declared, but the slim hand jerked him with such surprising strength that he barely managed to stay on his feet.
‘Let’s run!’
She dragged the titular counsellor along, and he kept looking back, across the lawn. The beautiful woman’s hair fluttered in the wind, the hem of her nightdress flapped and ballooned, the backs of her velvet slippers slapped loudly.
‘Yumi! For God’s sake!’ a voice called from somewhere high up.
Bullcox leaned out of a first-floor window, waving a hunting carbine.
Fandorin tried, as far as he could, to cover the woman running in front of him with his own body. A shot rang out, but the bullet missed by a wide margin, he didn’t hear it whine.
Looking back again, the titular counsellor saw the Englishman settling his eye to the carbine again, but even at this distance he could see the barrel wobbling – the gunman’s hands were shaking wildly.
He didn’t need to shout to the driver to set off. He had already set off, in fact, immediately after the first shot – without bothering to wait for his passengers. He just lashed the horses, pulled his head down into his shoulders and didn’t look back.
Erast Petrovich opened the door on the run, grabbed his companion round the waist and threw her inside. Then he jumped up on to the seat himself.
‘I dropped my shawl and lost one slipper!’ O-Yumi exclaimed. ‘Ah, how interesting!’ Her eyes were wide open and glittering brightly. ‘Where are we going, my darling?’
‘To my place at the consulate!’
She whispered:
‘That means we have an entire ten minutes. Close the blind.’
Fandorin did not notice how they reached the Bund. He was brought round by a knock at the window. Apparently someone had been knocking for a while, but he hadn’t heard them straight away.
‘Sir, sir,’ said a voice outside, ‘we’re here… You might add on a bit, for a fright like that.’
The titular counsellor opened the door slightly and thrust a silver dollar out through the crack.
‘Here you are. And wait.’
He managed more or less to tidy up his suit.
‘Poor Algie,’ O-Yumi said with a sigh. ‘I wanted so much to leave him according to all the rules. You’ve gone and spoilt the whole thing. Now his heart will be filled with bitterness and hate. But never mind. I swear that for us everything will end beautifully, in proper jojutsu fashion. You’ll have very, very good memories of me, we’ll separate in the “Autumn Leaf” style.’
The loveliest gift.
A tree gives is its last one -
A gold autumn leaf
INSANE HAPPINESS
‘So, that night you rejected me only because you wanted to separate from “poor Algie” according to all the r-rules?’ asked Erast Petrovich, looking at her mistrustfully. ‘That was the only reason?’
‘Not the only one. I really am afraid of him. Did you notice his left earlobe?’
‘What?’ Fandorin thought he must have misheard.
‘From the shape, length and colour of his earlobe, it’s clear that he is a very dangerous man.’
‘There you go with your ninso again! You’re just laughing at me!’
‘I counted ten dead bodies on his face,’ she said quietly. ‘And those are only the ones he killed with his own hands.’
Fandorin didn’t know whether she was being serious or playing the fool. Or rather, he wasn’t absolutely certain that she was playing the fool. And so he asked with a laugh:
‘Can you see dead bodies on my face?’
‘Of course. Every time one man takes the life of another, it leaves a scar on his soul. And everything that happens in the soul is reflected on the face. You have those traces as well. Do you want me to tell you how many people you have killed?’ She held out her hand and touched his cheekbones with her fingers. ‘One, two, three…’
‘St-stop it!’ he said, pulling away. ‘Better tell me more about Bullcox instead.’
‘He doesn’t know how to forgive. Apart from the ten that he killed himself, I saw other traces, people for whose deaths he was responsible. There are a lot of them. Far more than there are of the first kind.’
The titular counsellor leaned forward despite himself.
‘You mean you can see that too?’
‘Yes, it’s not hard to read a killer’s face, it’s moulded so starkly, with sharp contrasts of colour.’
‘Positively Lombroso,’ murmured Erast Petrovich, touching himself on the cheekbone. ‘No, no, it’s nothing, go on.’
‘The people with the most marks on their faces are front-line generals, artillery officers and, of course, executioners. But the most terrible scars I have ever seen, quite invisible to ordinary people, were on a very peaceable, wonderful man, the doctor in a brothel where I used to work.’
O-Yumi said it as calmly as if she were talking about a perfectly ordinary job – as a seamstress or milliner.
Fandorin felt his insides cringe and he went on hastily, so that she wouldn’t notice anything.
‘A doctor? How strange.’
‘It’s not strange at all. Over the years he had helped thousands of girls get rid of their fetuses. Only the doctor had fine, light marks, like ripples on water, but Algie’s are deep and bloody. How could I not be afraid of him?’
‘He won’t do anything to you,’ the titular counsellor said sombrely but firmly. ‘He won’t have time. Bullcox is finished.’
She looked at him in fearful admiration.
‘You’re going to kill him first, are you?’
‘No,’ replied Erast Petrovich, opening the blind and peering cautiously at Doronin’s windows. ‘Any day now Bullcox will be expelled from Japan. In disgrace. Or perhaps even put in prison.’
In was lunchtime. Shirota, as usual, must have taken his ‘captain’s daughter’ to the table d’hôte at the Grand Hotel, but – dammit! – there was a familiar figure hovering in the window of the consul’s apartment. Vsevolod Vitalievich was standing there with his arms folded, looking straight at the carriage stuck there at the gates.
The very idea of leading O-Yumi across the yard, in a state of undress, and with only one shoe, was quite unthinkable.
‘What are we waiting for?’ she asked. ‘Let’s go! I want to settle into my new home as quickly as possible. Your place is so uncomfortable as it is!’
But they couldn’t sneak in like thieves either. O-Yumi was a proud woman, she would feel insulted. And wouldn’t he cut a fine figure, embarrassed of the woman he loved!
I’m not embarrassed, Erast Petrovich told himself. It’s just that I need to prepare myself. That is one. And she is not dressed. That is two.